Irish Volunteers launch their own newspaper
Read the first edition of 'The Irish Volunteer' and learn about its historical importance with Dr. Conor Mulvagh, UCD
On 7 February 1914, the Irish Volunteer movement launched its official newspaper, the eponymously titled The Irish Volunteer. A PDF version of first edition, courtesy of the National Folklore Collection at UCD, can be read in full by clicking on the image below.
What was The Irish Volunteer and what function did it
serve?
The Irish Volunteer was a weekly newspaper primarily
aimed at the membership of its namesake, an organisation which had
been founded by Eoin MacNeill in November 1913.
A single, four-page paper called the Volunteer Gazette had been issued in December 1913, but this was never intended to be continued as a periodical. On 7 February, the first issue of The Irish Volunteer was in print. Along with providing news and political commentary, it had an important official function in disseminating official orders and announcements, especially to the provincial units.
Who was behind The Irish Volunteer?
William Sears, editor and one of the directors of the
Enniscorthy Echo, first proposed the idea of publishing a
newspaper for the Irish Volunteers in January 1914. The
Enniscorthy Echo was an advanced nationalist paper with
Sinn Féin links going back to 1907/8. The provisional
committee of the Volunteers accepted Sears’ offer, and a
member of the Echo’s staff, Laurence de Lacy, was
appointed editor of the new publication. All proofs of the paper
were approved by the provisional committee of the Irish Volunteers
- namely: Eoin MacNeill, L.J. Kettle, John Gore, and The
O’Rahilly. In the Bureau of Military History, Bulmer Hobson
identified Laurence de Lacy as having been a member of the IRB in
this period. As such, de Lacy’s editorship of
The Irish Volunteer constitutes a further element of the
IRB’s infiltration of the Irish Volunteer movement.
What challenges did The Irish Volunteer face in its
early history?
When the volunteers split in September 1914 over the question of
participation in the war effort,
The Irish Volunteer sided with Eoin MacNeill. The
relative unpopularity of MacNeill’s faction and the
emergence of a rival Redmondite publication, the
National Volunteer, in October, were two key factors in
the Enniscorthy Echo’s decision to cease
publication of The Irish Volunteer in October 1914.
Wartime censorship also played its part in reducing the
profitability of the paper. Titles such as the
Enniscorthy Echo and The Irish Volunteer were
explicitly identified as ‘extreme’ newspapers in Royal
Irish Constabulary police reports.
What happened to The Irish Volunteer after the
split?
Following its first closure, The Irish Volunteer was
revived in a renewed format in December 1914 with MacNeill
identified on the masthead as editor of the paper. However,
Hobson later claimed that the majority of the routine work fell to
him and that MacNeill’s editorship was largely titular and
consisted of writing the ‘notes’ on the front page of
the paper; that is, admittedly, an important aspect of the
publication. The final issue of the paper appeared on 22 April
1916, the day before Easter 1916. Given the confusion that
abounded in Ireland by that point, this issue of the paper is an
extremely valuable and significant historical source.
What happened to The Irish Volunteer after the 1916
Rising?
After the Rising, The Irish Volunteer, the
Enniscorthy Echo, and even the Redmondite
National Volunteer ceased publication for a time.
Laurence de Lacy, still involved with
The Irish Volunteer, went on the run. To give a sense of
the government clampdown, the majority of the
Enniscorthy Echo’s staff were arrested and interned
after the Rising. A successor paper to
The Irish Volunteer, under the Irish version of the title
- An t-Óglách - appeared in
August 1918. However, this paper was even more firmly under the
command of the Irish Republican Army than the Irish Volunteer had
been under the control of the Volunteer executive between 1914 and
1916.
Was there propaganda in The Irish Volunteer and what
form did it take?
The importance of history - as opposed to myth - in the pages of
The Irish Volunteer is an important theme of the paper.
Unlike the Anglo-Irish Literary Theatre’s enthusiasm for the
legends of ancient Ireland, The Irish Volunteer reflects
a strong interest in Ireland’s factual - albeit sometimes
distorted - military past. Figures such as Brian Boru, Owen Roe
O’Neill, and Henry Grattan’s Volunteers from 1782 were
constantly brought into the columns of the paper as examples of
laudable Irish military leaders who had led Irish armies on Irish
soil in the historical past. Eoin MacNeill’s professional
training as a historian points to his probable involvement in
these articles, but many others picked up these ideas and wrote
extensively on the various historical precedents for, and
antecedents to, the Irish Volunteers.
What can this paper tell us about the cultural history of the
Irish Volunteers?
Volunteer anthems and poems in praise of the movement were being
written continuously and many were published in the early issues
of the paper. The volume of this material is at times surprising
for a paper which ostensibly existed to aid volunteer training and
transmit messages to and from headquarters in Dublin. This shows
the clear desire to use the paper for propagandising and boosting
morale within the movement. However, after some time, a notice
appeared on the front (notes) page of the paper urging volunteers
to refrain from sending in songs and poems - much of it of
questionable quality - as the paper’s staff were inundated
each week with this kind of material.
How did advertisers capitalise on the emergence of this new
paper?
Newspaper advertising in the Ireland of 1914 was highly
competitive and innovative. There is a real sense of how lucrative
the emergent volunteer movement was for Irish industries. Playing
on a host of clever marketing strategies, advertisers flocked to
The Irish Volunteer to cash in on the latest wave of
nationalism. One regular advertisement within the columns advised
readers ‘Don’t Hesitate To Shoot … Straight to
Gleeson & Co., For Your Tailoring And Outfitting’.
Another company’s advert simply read: ‘WANTED! 10,000
Volunteers to buy Loughlin’s Irish trade mark
outfitting’. Clearly textile vendors and manufacturers were
quick to cash in on the new market for uniforms. Equally, outdoor
equipment, razor blades, footballs, other nationalist and military
periodicals and books, and even eye-tests for aspiring marksmen,
were products and services that sought to profit from
paramilitarism.
Is there any evidence in the paper that the Irish Volunteers
looked out to the wider world?
Within The Irish Volunteer there is much evidence of the
extension of the movement outside of Ireland. Units were formed in
the United States and in Britain, and their formation and progress
can be charted through a reading of The Irish Volunteer.
Additionally, articles within
The Irish Volunteer occasionally took on a distinctly
international outlook. In the first issue, Roger Casement made a
call for Volunteers to participate as Irishmen in the Olympic
Games which were planned for Berlin in 1916 - an event which never
happened. Similarly, the paper contained several anonymous
articles by Indians living in Ireland which outlined the colonial
policies of Britain in India and made comparisons between Indian
and Irish efforts to gain greater national freedoms.
In summary, how important was The Irish Volunteer in
the context of its time?
By virtue of being a specialist newspaper targeted at members of a
private paramilitary organisation, The Irish Volunteer,
its offshoots and successors, are a rare and particularly
important subset of Irish political newspapers from the
revolutionary decade. The function of
The Irish Volunteer was not merely news or propaganda, as
was the case with other publications. Rather, it had a role in
training the force and delivering messages and orders from
headquarters to the battalions and companies nationwide.
As a mobilising force in keeping Eoin MacNeill’s volunteers united and active after the vast majority of the movement sided with John Redmond’s policy of supporting the war effort in September 1914, The Irish Volunteer played a leading role in preserving the movement that was the backbone of the rebellion in April 1916.
Dr Conor Mulvagh lectures in the School of History & Archives, University College Dublin
